(April 9): OpenAI said it is pausing its Stargate artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure project in the UK, as it reins in ambitious spending plans ahead of a highly anticipated public listing.
“We see huge potential for the UK’s AI future,” the company said in an emailed statement on Thursday. “AI compute is foundational to that goal — we continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment.”
Stargate is OpenAI’s costly plan to expand global data centre capacity to run and train its AI models, starting in the US. Its first campus is in Texas, with similar projects underway in Norway and the United Arab Emirates. It announced Stargate UK in September.
The company, which was valued at US$852 billion ($1.08 trillion) in a financing round last month, has been closing down side projects beyond its core ChatGPT service as the company faces increasing competition from arch-rival Anthropic and Google. In March, OpenAI shuttered its video-generation app Sora. The company also recently scrapped plans to expand its flagship data centre campus in Texas with Oracle Corp.
OpenAI’s pullback in the UK is a blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to make Britain a hub for AI development. His ruling Labour party has made data centres a pillar of its economic growth plan. OpenAI’s Stargate project was set to be built in one of the government’s AI Growth Zones, an economic development region. But the country has one of the highest energy costs in Europe.
A spokesperson for the UK’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology said the nation’s AI sector has attracted more than GBP100 billion (US$134 billion or $171.05 billion) in private investment since Starmer’s Labour party came to power in 2024.
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“Our focus is on continuing to create the right conditions for investment in the UK’s AI and data centre infrastructure,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We are continuing to work with OpenAI and other leading AI companies to strengthen UK compute capacity.”
OpenAI previously said it would work on Stargate UK with British data centre developer Nscale and Nvidia Cor, deploying up to 31,000 of the chipmaker’s AI accelerators.
A representative of Nscale declined to comment. Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments on Thursday.
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OpenAI said on Thursday that it will continue to work with the UK government on an agreement to provide ChatGPT and other services for public services. Politico reported earlier on the pause of its Stargate plan.
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